Myths of the Cherokee by James Mooney
1776. Important treaties were made here with the Cherokee in 1785,
4439 words | Chapter 25
and with the Chickasaw in 1786.
(26) Colonel Benjamin Hawkins (p. 61): This distinguished soldier,
statesman, and author, was born in Warren county, North Carolina,
in 1754, and died at Hawkinsville, Georgia, in 1816. His father,
Colonel Philemon Hawkins, organized and commanded a regiment in the
Revolutionary war, and was a member of the convention that ratified
the national constitution. At the outbreak of the Revolution young
Hawkins was a student at Princeton, but offered his services to the
American cause, and on account of his knowledge of French and other
modern languages was appointed by Washington his staff interpreter for
communicating with the French officers cooperating with the American
army. He took part in several engagements and was afterward appointed
commissioner for procuring war supplies abroad. After the close
of the war he was elected to Congress, and in 1785 was appointed
on the commission which negotiated at Hopewell the first federal
treaty with the Cherokee. He served a second term in the House and
another in the Senate, and in 1796 was appointed superintendent for
all the Indians south of the Ohio. He thereupon removed to the Creek
country and established himself in the wilderness at what is now
Hawkinsville, Georgia, where he remained in the continuance of his
office until his death. As Senator he signed the deed by which North
Carolina ceded Tennessee to the United States in 1790, and as Indian
superintendent helped to negotiate seven different treaties with
the southern tribes. He had an extensive knowledge of the customs
and language of the Creeks, and his "Sketch of the Creek Country,"
written in 1799 and published by the Historical Society of Georgia
in 1848, remains a standard. His journal and other manuscripts
are in possession of the same society, while a manuscript Cherokee
vocabulary is in possession of the American Philosophical Society
in Philadelphia. Authorities: Hawkins's manuscripts, with Georgia
Historical Society; Indian Treaties, 1837; American State Papers:
Indian Affairs, I, 1832; II, 1834; Gatschet, Creek Migration Legend;
Appleton, Cyclopædia of American Biography.
(27) Governor William Blount (p. 68): William Blount, territorial
governor of Tennessee, was born in North Carolina in 1744 and died
at Knoxville, Tennessee, in 1800. He held several important offices
in his native state, including two terms in the assembly and two
others as delegate to the old congress, in which latter capacity
he was one of the signers of the Federal constitution in 1787. On
the organization of a territorial government for Tennessee in 1790,
he was appointed territorial governor and also superintendent for
the southern tribes, fixing his headquarters at Knoxville. In 1791
he negotiated an important treaty with the Cherokee, and had much
to do with directing the operations against the Indians until the
close of the Indian war. He was president of the convention which
organized the state of Tennessee in 1796, and was elected to the
national senate, but was expelled on the charge of having entered
into a treasonable conspiracy to assist the British in conquering
Louisiana from Spain. A United States officer was sent to arrest
him, but returned without executing his mission on being warned by
Blount's friends that they would not allow him to be taken from the
state. The impeachment proceedings against him were afterward dismissed
on technical grounds. In the meantime the people of his own state had
shown their confidence in him by electing him to the state senate, of
which he was chosen president. He died at the early age of fifty-three,
the most popular man in the state next to Sevier. His younger brother,
Willie Blount, who had been his secretary, was afterward governor of
Tennessee, 1809-1815.
(28) St Clair's defeat, 1791 (p. 72): Early in 1791 Major-General
Arthur St Clair, a veteran officer in two wars and governor of the
Northwestern Territory, was appointed to the chief command of the
army operating against the Ohio tribes. On November 4 of that year,
while advancing upon the Miami villages with an army of 1,400 men,
he was surprised by an Indian force of about the same number under
Little-turtle, the Miami chief, in what is now southwestern Mercer
county, Ohio, adjoining the Indiana line. Because of the cowardly
conduct of the militia he was totally defeated, with the loss of
632 officers and men killed and missing, and 263 wounded, many of
whom afterward died. The artillery was abandoned, not a horse being
left alive to draw it off, and so great was the panic that the men
threw away their arms and fled for miles, even after the pursuit had
ceased. It was afterward learned that the Indians lost 150 killed,
besides many wounded. Two years later General Wayne built Fort Recovery
upon the same spot. The detachment sent to do the work found within
a space of 350 yards 500 skulls, while for several miles along the
line of pursuit the woods were strewn with skeletons and muskets. The
two cannon lost were found in the adjacent stream. Authorities: St
Clair's report and related documents, 1791; American State Papers,
Indian Affairs, I, 1832; Drake, Indians 570, 571, 1880; Appleton's
Cyclopædia of American Biography.
(29) Cherokee clans, (p. 74): The Cherokee have seven clans, viz:
Ani'-Wa'`ya, Wolf; Ani'-Kawi', Deer; Ani'-Tsi'skwa, Bird; Ani'-Wâ'di,
Paint; Ani'-Sahâ'ni; Ani'-Ga'tâge'wi; Ani'-Gilâ'hi. The names of the
last three can not be translated with certainty. The Wolf clan is
the largest and most important in the tribe. It is probable that,
in accordance with the general system in other tribes, each clan
had formerly certain hereditary duties and privileges, but no trace
of these now remains. Children belong to the clan of the mother,
and the law forbidding marriage between persons of the same clan is
still enforced among the conservative full-bloods. The "seven clans"
are frequently mentioned in the sacred formulas, and even in some of
the tribal laws promulgated within the century. There is evidence that
originally there were fourteen, which by extinction or absorption have
been reduced to seven; thus, the ancient Turtle-dove and Raven clans
now constitute a single Bird clan. The subject will be discussed more
fully in a future Cherokee paper.
(30) Wayne's victory, 1794 (p. 78): After the successive failures
of Harmar and St Clair in their efforts against the Ohio tribes the
chief command was assigned, in 1793, to Major-General Anthony Wayne,
who had already distinguished himself by his fighting qualities during
the Revolution. Having built Fort Recovery on the site of St Clair's
defeat, he made that post his headquarters through the winter of
1793-94. In the summer of 1794 he advanced down the Maumee with an
army of 3,000 men, two-thirds of whom were regulars. On August 20 he
encountered the confederated Indian forces near the head of the Maumee
rapids at a point known as the Fallen Timbers and defeated them with
great slaughter, the pursuit being followed up by the cavalry until
the Indians took refuge under the guns of the British garrison at
Fort Miami, just below the rapids. His own loss was only 33 killed
and 100 wounded, of whom 11 afterward died of their wounds. The loss
of the Indians and their white auxiliaries was believed to be more
than double this. The Indian force was supposed to number 2,000,
while, on account of the impetuosity of Wayne's charge, the number
of his troops actually engaged did not exceed 900. On account of this
defeat and the subsequent devastation of their towns and fields by the
victorious army the Indians were compelled to sue for peace, which
was granted by the treaty concluded at Greenville, Ohio, August 3,
1795, by which the tribes represented ceded away nearly their whole
territory in Ohio. Authorities: Wayne's report and related documents,
1794, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, 1832; Drake, Indians,
571-577, 1880; Greenville treaty, in Indian Treaties, 1837; Appleton's
Cyclopædia of American Biography.
(31) First things of civilization (p. 83): We usually find that
the first things adopted by the Indian from his white neighbor are
improved weapons and cutting tools, with trinkets and articles of
personal adornment. After a regular trade has been established certain
traders marry Indian wives, and, taking up their permanent residence
in the Indian country, engage in farming and stock raising according
to civilized methods, thus, even without intention, constituting
themselves industrial teachers for the tribe.
From data furnished by Haywood, guns appear to have been first
introduced among the Cherokee about the year 1700 or 1710, although
he himself puts the date much earlier. Horses were probably not owned
in any great number before the marking out of the horse-path for
traders from Augusta about 1740. The Cherokee, however, took kindly
to the animal, and before the beginning of the war of 1760 had a
"prodigious number." In spite of their great losses at that time they
had so far recovered in 1775 that almost every man then had from two
to a dozen (Adair, p. 231). In the border wars following the Revolution
companies of hundreds of mounted Cherokee and Creeks sometimes invaded
the settlements. The cow is called wa'ka by the Cherokee and waga by
the Creeks, indicating that their first knowledge of it came through
the Spaniards. Nuttall states that it was first introduced among the
Cherokee by the celebrated Nancy Ward (Travels, p. 130). It was not
in such favor as the horse, being valuable chiefly for food, of which
at that time there was an abundant supply from the wild game. A potent
reason for its avoidance was the Indian belief that the eating of the
flesh of a slow-moving animal breeds a corresponding sluggishness in
the eater. The same argument applied even more strongly to the hog,
and to this day a few of the old conservatives among the East Cherokee
will have nothing to do with beef, pork, milk, or butter. Nevertheless,
Bartram tells of a trader in the Cherokee country as early as 1775
who had a stock of cattle, and whose Indian wife had learned to
make butter and cheese (Travels, p. 347). In 1796 Hawkins mentions
meeting two Cherokee women driving ten very fat cattle to market in
the white settlements (manuscript journal, 1796). Bees, if not native,
as the Indians claim, were introduced at so early a period that the
Indians have forgotten their foreign origin. The De Soto narrative
mentions the finding of a pot of honey in an Indian village in Georgia
in 1540. The peach was cultivated in orchards a century before the
Revolution, and one variety, known as early as 1700 as the Indian
peach, the Indians claimed as their own, asserting that they had
had it before the whites came to America (Lawson, Carolina, p. 182,
ed. 1860). Potatoes were introduced early and were so much esteemed
that, according to one old informant, the Indians in Georgia, before
the Removal, "lived on them." Coffee came later, and the same informant
remembered when the full-bloods still considered it poison, in spite
of the efforts of the chief, Charles Hicks, to introduce it among them.
Spinning wheels and looms were introduced shortly before the
Revolution. According to the Wahnenauhi manuscript the first among
the Cherokee were brought over from England by an Englishman named
Edward Graves, who taught his Cherokee wife to spin and weave. The
anonymous writer may have confounded this early civilizer with a young
Englishman who was employed by Agent Hawkins in 1801 to make wheels
and looms for the Creeks (Hawkins, 1801, in American State Papers:
Indian Affairs, I, p. 647). Wafford, in his boyhood, say about 1815,
knew an old man named Tsi'nawi on Young-cane creek of Nottely river, in
upper Georgia, who was known as a wheelwright and was reputed to have
made the first spinning wheel and loom ever made among the mountain
Cherokee, or perhaps in the Nation, long before Wafford's time, or
"about the time the Cherokee began to drop their silver ornaments
and go to work." In 1785 the commissioners for the Hopewell treaty
reported that some of the Cherokee women had lately learned to spin,
and many were very desirous of instruction in the raising, spinning,
and weaving of flax, cotton, and wool (Hopewell Commissioners'
Report, 1785, American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, p. 39). In
accordance with their recommendation the next treaty made with the
tribe, in 1791, contained a provision for supplying the Cherokee with
farming tools (Holston treaty, 1791, Indian Treaties, p. 36, 1837),
and this civilizing policy was continued and broadened until, in 1801,
their agent reported that at the Cherokee agency the wheel, the loom,
and the plow were in pretty general use, and farming, manufacturing,
and stock raising were the principal topics of conversation among
men and women (Hawkins manuscripts, Treaty Commission of 1801).
(32) Colonel Return J. Meigs (p. 84): Return Jonathan Meigs was born
in Middletown, Connecticut, December 17, 1734, and died at the Cherokee
agency in Tennessee, January 28, 1823. He was the first-born son of his
parents, who gave him the somewhat peculiar name of Return Jonathan
to commemorate a romantic incident in their own courtship, when his
mother, a young Quakeress, called back her lover as he was mounting
his horse to leave the house forever after what he had supposed was a
final refusal. The name has been handed down through five generations,
every one of which has produced some man distinguished in the public
service. The subject of this sketch volunteered immediately after the
opening engagement of the Revolution at Lexington, and was assigned
to duty under Arnold, with rank of major. He accompanied Arnold in
the disastrous march through the wilderness against Quebec, and was
captured in the assault upon the citadel and held until exchanged
the next year. In 1777 he raised a regiment and was promoted to the
rank of colonel. For a gallant and successful attack upon the enemy
at Sag harbor, Long island, he received a sword and a vote of thanks
from Congress, and by his conduct at the head of his regiment at Stony
point won the favorable notice of Washington. After the close of the
Revolution he removed to Ohio, where, as a member of the territorial
legislature, he drew up the earliest code of regulations for the
pioneer settlers. In 1801 he was appointed agent for the Cherokee
and took up his residence at the agency at Tellico blockhouse,
opposite the mouth of Tellico river, in Tennessee, continuing to
serve in that capacity until his death. He was succeeded as agent by
Governor McMinn, of Tennessee. In the course of twenty-two years he
negotiated several treaties with the Cherokee and did much to further
the work of civilization among them and to defend them against unjust
aggression. He also wrote a journal of the expedition to Quebec. His
grandson of the same name was special agent for the Cherokee and Creeks
in 1834, afterward achieving a reputation in the legal profession both
in Tennessee and in the District of Columbia. Authorities: Appleton,
Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1894; Royce, Cherokee Nation, in
Fifth Annual Report Bureau of Ethnology, 1888; documents in American
State Papers, Indian Affairs, I and II.
(33) Tecumtha (p. 87): This great chief of the Shawano and commander
of the allied northern tribes in the British service was born near
the present Chillicothe, in western Ohio, about 1770, and fell in the
battle of the Thames, in Ontario, October 5, 1813. His name signifies
a "flying panther"--i. e., a meteor. He came of fighting stock good
even in a tribe distinguished for its warlike qualities, his father
and elder brother having been killed in battle with the whites. His
mother is said to have died among the Cherokee. Tecumtha is first
heard of as taking part in an engagement with the Kentuckians when
about twenty years old, and in a few years he had secured recognition
as the ablest leader among the allied tribes. It is said that he
took part in every important engagement with the Americans from the
time of Harmar's defeat in 1790 until the battle in which he lost his
life. When about thirty years of age he conceived the idea of uniting
the tribes northwest of the Ohio, as Pontiac had united them before,
in a great confederacy to resist the further advance of the Americans,
taking the stand that the whole territory between the Ohio and the
Mississippi belonged to all these tribes in common and that no one
tribe had the right to sell any portion of it without the consent
of the others. The refusal of the government to admit this principle
led him to take active steps to unite the tribes upon that basis, in
which he was seconded by his brother, the Prophet, who supplemented
Tecumtha's eloquence with his own claims to supernatural revelation. In
the summer of 1810 Tecumtha held a conference with Governor Harrison
at Vincennes to protest against a recent treaty cession, and finding
after exhausting his arguments that the effort was fruitless, he
closed the debate with the words: "The President is far off and
may sit in his town and drink his wine, but you and I will have to
fight it out." Both sides at once prepared for war, Tecumtha going
south to enlist the aid of the Creek, Choctaw, and other southern
tribes, while Harrison took advantage of his absence to force the
issue by marching against the Prophet's town on the Tippecanoe river,
where the hostile warriors from a dozen tribes had gathered. A battle
fought before daybreak of November 6, 1811, resulted in the defeat of
the Indians and the scattering of their forces. Tecumtha returned to
find his plans brought to naught for the time, but the opening of the
war between the United States and England a few months later enabled
him to rally the confederated tribes once more to the support of the
British against the Americans. As a commissioned brigadier-general in
the British service he commanded 2,000 warriors in the war of 1812,
distinguishing himself no less by his bravery than by his humanity in
preventing outrages and protecting prisoners from massacre, at one time
saving the lives of four hundred American prisoners who had been taken
in ambush near Fort Meigs and were unable to make longer resistance. He
was wounded at Maguagua, where nearly four hundred were killed and
wounded on both sides. He covered the British retreat after the battle
of Lake Erie, and, refusing to retreat farther, compelled the British
General Proctor to make a stand at the Thames river. Almost the whole
force of the American attack fell on Tecumtha's division. Early in
the engagement he was shot through the arm, but continued to fight
desperately until he received a bullet in the head and fell dead,
surrounded by the bodies of 120 of his slain warriors. The services
of Tecumtha and his Indians to the British cause have been recognized
by an English historian, who says, "but for them it is probable we
should not now have a Canada." Authorities: Drake, Indians, ed. 1880;
Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1894; Eggleston, Tecumseh
and the Shawnee Prophet.
(34) Fort Mims Massacre, 1813 (p. 89): Fort Mims, so called from an
old Indian trader on whose lands it was built, was a stockade fort
erected in the summer of 1813 for the protection of the settlers in
what was known as the Tensaw district, and was situated on Tensaw
lake, Alabama, one mile east of Alabama river and about forty miles
above Mobile. It was garrisoned by about 200 volunteer troops under
Major Daniel Beasley, with refugees from the neighboring settlement,
making a total at the time of its destruction of 553 men, women, and
children. Being carelessly guarded, it was surprised on the morning of
August 30 by about 1,000 Creek warriors led by the mixed-blood chief,
William Weatherford, who rushed in at the open gate, and, after a stout
but hopeless resistance by the garrison, massacred all within, with
the exception of the few negroes and halfbreeds, whom they spared, and
about a dozen whites who made their escape. The Indian loss is unknown,
but was very heavy, as the fight continued at close quarters until the
buildings were fired over the heads of the defenders. The unfortunate
tragedy was due entirely to the carelessness of the commanding officer,
who had been repeatedly warned that the Indians were about, and at the
very moment of the attack a negro was tied up waiting to be flogged for
reporting that he had the day before seen a number of painted warriors
lurking a short distance outside the stockade. Authorities: Pickett,
Alabama, ed. 1896; Hamilton and Owen, note, p. 170, in Transactions
Alabama Historical Society, II, 1898; Agent Hawkins's report, 1813,
American State Papers: Indian Affairs, I, p. 853; Drake, Indians,
ed. 1880. The figures given are those of Pickett, which in this
instance seem most correct, while Drake's are evidently exaggerated.
(35) General William McIntosh (p. 98): This noted halfbreed chief
of the Lower Creeks was the son of a Scotch officer in the British
army by an Indian mother, and was born at the Creek town of Coweta
in Alabama, on the lower Chattahoochee, nearly opposite the present
city of Columbus, Georgia, and killed at the same place by order
of the Creek national council on April 30, 1825. Having sufficient
education to keep up an official correspondence, he brought himself
to public notice and came to be regarded as the principal chief of
the Lower Creeks. In the Creek war of 1813-14 he led his warriors to
the support of the Americans against his brethren of the Upper towns,
and acted a leading part in the terrible slaughters at Autossee and the
Horseshoe bend. In 1817 he again headed his warriors on the government
side against the Seminole and was commissioned as major. His common
title of general belonged to him only by courtesy. In 1821 he was
the principal supporter of the treaty of Indian springs, by which a
large tract between the Flint and Chattahoochee rivers was ceded. The
treaty was repudiated by the Creek Nation as being the act of a small
faction. Two other attempts were made to carry through the treaty,
in which the interested motives of McIntosh became so apparent that
he was branded as a traitor to his Nation and condemned to death,
together with his principal underlings, in accordance with a Creek
law making death the penalty for undertaking to sell lands without the
consent of the national council. About the same time he was publicly
exposed and denounced in the Cherokee council for an attempt to bribe
John Ross and other chiefs of the Cherokee in the same fashion. At
daylight of April 30, 1825, a hundred or more warriors sent by the
Creek national council surrounded his house and, after allowing the
women and children to come out, set fire to it and shot McIntosh
and another chief as they tried to escape. He left three wives,
one of whom was a Cherokee. Authorities: Drake, Indians, ed. 1880;
Letters from McIntosh's son and widows, 1825, in American State Papers:
Indian Affairs, II, pp. 764 and 768.
(36) William Weatherford (p. 89): This leader of the hostiles in
the Creek war was the son of a white father and a halfbreed woman
of Tuskegee town whose father had been a Scotchman. Weatherford
was born in the Creek Nation about 1780 and died on Little river,
in Monroe county, Alabama, in 1826. He came first into prominence by
leading the attack upon Fort Mims, August 30, 1813, which resulted
in the destruction of the fort and the massacre of over five hundred
inmates. It is maintained, with apparent truth, that he did his
best to prevent the excesses which followed the victory, and left
the scene rather than witness the atrocities when he found that he
could not restrain his followers. The fact that Jackson allowed him
to go home unmolested after the final surrender is evidence that he
believed Weatherford guiltless. At the battle of the Holy Ground,
in the following December, he was defeated and narrowly escaped
capture by the troops under General Claiborne. When the last hope
of the Creeks had been destroyed and their power of resistance
broken by the bloody battle of the Horseshoe bend, March 27, 1814,
Weatherford voluntarily walked into General Jackson's headquarters
and surrendered, creating such an impression by his straightforward
and fearless manner that the general, after a friendly interview,
allowed him to go back alone to gather up his people preliminary to
arranging terms of peace. After the treaty he retired to a plantation
in Monroe county, where he lived in comfort and was greatly respected
by his white neighbors until his death. As an illustration of his
courage it is told how he once, single-handed, arrested two murderers
immediately after the crime, when the local justice and a large crowd
of bystanders were afraid to approach them. Jackson declared him to
be as high toned and fearless as any man he had ever met. In person
he was tall, straight, and well proportioned, with features indicating
intelligence, bravery, and enterprise. Authorities: Pickett, Alabama,
ed. 1896; Drake, Indians, ed. 1880; Woodward, Reminiscences, 1859.
(37) Reverend David Brainerd (p. 104): The pioneer American missionary
from whom the noted Cherokee mission took its name was born at Haddam,
Connecticut, April 20, 1718, and died at Northampton, Massachusetts,
October 9, 1747. He entered Yale college in 1739, but was expelled
on account of his religious opinions. In 1742 he was licensed as a
preacher and the next year began work as missionary to the Mahican
Indians of the village of Kaunameek, twenty miles from Stockbridge,
Massachusetts. He persuaded them to remove to Stockbridge, where
he put them in charge of a resident minister, after which he took
up work with good result among the Delaware and other tribes on
the Delaware and Susquehanna rivers. In 1747 his health failed and
he was forced to retire to Northampton, where he died a few months
later. He wrote a journal and an account of his missionary labors at
Kaunameek. His later mission work was taken up and continued by his
brother. Authority: Appleton's Cyclopædia of American Biography, 1894.
(38) Reverend Samuel Austin Worcester (p. 105): This noted missionary
and philologist, the son of a Congregational minister who was
also a printer, was born at Worcester, Massachusetts, January 19,
1798, and died at Park Hill, in the Cherokee Nation west, April 20,
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